Training for FEMA inspectors often brief

With an investment of eight hours one Monday in early October, Johanna Hadik of Margate got a badge and the next day was out inspecting hurricane damage for the federal government.

"I didn't know if I could do it," said Hadik, who has worked as a real estate appraiser. "I'm only 22."

Hadik is one of more than 1,200 housing inspectors roaming Florida since the first hurricane struck Aug. 13, some hired just days before to verify residents' claims of damage for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Their observations are determining how almost $1 billion in disaster relief is handed out to Floridians.

The process has prompted complaints that FEMA is unfairly denying some claims while paying out others to undeserving residents. In Miami-Dade County as of last week, 11,365 residents had received $25.7 million for Hurricane Frances, though the storm largely missed the county.

"Our job is twofold: It is to get the money out as rapidly as possible to help people rebuild their lives while at the same time being accountable to the American public for those tax dollars," FEMA director Michael D. Brown told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel earlier this month. "Not one dime goes out to an individual until ... we have inspected that property."

Rather than have an army of housing inspectors on the government payroll year-round, FEMA pays two private companies to train and hire inspectors: Alltech Inc. of Herndon, Va.; and Partnership for Response & Recovery, or PaRR Inspections, of Fairfax, Va.

How well those companies are doing the job is unclear.

FEMA denied the newspaper's request to interview the agency official in charge of the inspections and as of Friday had not provided copies of the contracts, saying a lawyer had to review them for "proprietary information." FEMA also did not answer detailed questions, including how much inspectors are paid.

Executives of PaRR and Alltech declined to comment. Each company receives about $150 million for the 5-year contract.

Asked about the results of contract audits and performance evaluations, FEMA replied in writing only that "monitoring efforts have revealed that inspections quality is at an acceptable level."

But some inspectors, in interviews with the newspaper, raised concerns about the adequacy of the training they received. Others said that paying inspectors for each inspection they complete encourages cursory reviews. And both inspectors and FEMA officials acknowledge they rely heavily on disaster applicants to be truthful.

"We have to make the judgment on the fly," said Dave Francis, who just returned home to Seattle after inspecting homes in central Florida and the Treasure Coast. "We're told the occupants know their dwelling the best and we should take as much from them as possible."

A former contractor who owns a home-inspection business, Francis answered a newspaper ad by PaRR two years ago and attended "a pretty intensive one-day seminar" covering FEMA policies and how to inspect homes room by room, he said. Inspectors also take online and refresher courses before deploying for a disaster.

With 20 years in the building industry, Francis said he flags claims for damages he thinks were not caused by the storm.

"An inspector has to walk a fine balance between believing what people say and actually verifying the damage," he said. "We can tell basically what's old and what's not."

Other inspectors said they received little instruction on how to detect fraud.

Dave Larkin of Bradley Beach, N.J., a contractor for 20 years, performed 250 to 300 inspections over three weeks in Fort Walton Beach and Ocala after the hurricanes.

"The way this is set up, it's not your job to be an investigator," said Larkin, an Alltech inspector. "During the training, it's made perfectly clear that you're a clerk."

Leon Cooper of Milton, Santa Rosa County, became an inspector for Alltech on Oct. 4 and inspected homes in north central Florida. Previously, he had worked for seven years as an inspector for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Of Alltech's fraud training, he said: "If they talked about it, it was so brief nobody could remember."

Many of his inspections were in low-income areas with little storm damage. Applicants expected FEMA to fix their "rotten" homes, he said. "They're going to try to get whatever they can get."

In many disasters, applicants have been caught trying to dupe the government by submitting multiple claims for the same household and damaging their own belongings. The Sun-Sentinel reported earlier this month that Miami-Dade residents in low-income areas said they saw neighbors pouring water on furniture and throwing rocks at cars to make it look like damage from Hurricane Frances.

FEMA acknowledges a long history of fraud in disaster aid by applicants who call it "Christmas money" or "free money" and by inspectors who are supposed to prevent it. In 1994, two inspectors for Vulcan Services Inc., which had a FEMA inspection contract at the time, were charged with signing off on inspections they never made after the California earthquake at Northridge.

FEMA said it did not know how many inspectors had been fired in Florida for misconduct or poor work. "The companies declined to supply us with numbers and cause of terminations," the agency said in a written response to the newspaper.

The system generally succeeds in getting much-needed aid to deserving victims of a disaster quickly, FEMA officials say. The government has relied on private contractors to perform inspections for more than 20 years.

"Contractors are able to perform the inspection services at lower costs and more expeditiously than would be the case if in-house FEMA personnel performed them," the agency said in its written response.

The private contractors pay inspectors for travel to and from disaster sites, but inspectors are responsible for expenses such as food and lodging. Francis, a self-described "road-trip addict," said he received $44.66 per inspection. The companies get bonuses from FEMA for completing inspections within 72 hours and pass $5 per inspection along to the inspector, Francis said.

Francis has met inspectors who roam the country in recreational vehicles, making enough money from one disaster to finance their travel for a year or more. "I'm thinking of doing that," he said.

Because inspectors are paid by inspection, the more they do, the more they make.

The message, Cooper said, is "get it done and get it done quick."

Web sites for Alltech and PaRR do not specify any required experience for inspectors.

"Generally, the contractors look for persons who have a construction background, good customer service skills, computer experience and the ability to work long hours under stressful conditions," FEMA wrote in response to a question from the newspaper. "Experience as an insurance adjuster, building inspector or work on a construction project is deemed useful."

Frank Jason Cole lists himself as president of a company specializing in "HDTV, home theater, home security, surveillance and satellite repair," according to his business card.

Cole was inspecting homes in Mississippi after Hurricane Ivan for PaRR when he told a woman he could "hook her up" with FEMA benefits in exchange for sex, said Lt. Wayne Cook of the Stone County Sheriff's Department in Mississippi.

Out of jail on $25,000 bond, Cole denied the allegations, telling the Sun-Sentinel in a telephone interview on Friday that he is innocent.

He said he applied to be an inspector because "it's a job." He would not discuss his professional background except to say that he studied accounting in college but did not graduate.

Hadik, the 22-year-old inspector, said she heard about the job from a friend.

She completed a one-day training class that covered "features of the computer, what to fill in, how to be the inspector," she said. "I was deployed immediately the next day."

Working two years as a real estate appraiser, she said, helped. "The way they throw you into it, you have to have a background."

For 17 days, Hadik visited homes in hard-hit Martin County and Pinellas County on the west coast. She said she averaged 10 to 15 inspections a day. At $43 per inspection, that brought her up to $645 a day.

"If they had supplied me with 20 a day, I would have done 20," she said.

State Rep. Susan Bucher, D-Royal Palm Beach, questioned how thorough inspectors can be when they're examining so many homes each day.

"It sounds like there's a wide-open area that would attract fraud," she said. "No wonder Miami-Dade got so much money."

Sally Kestin can be reached at skestin@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4510.